Fear
by Jennifer Hack
Summary: Alice/Uncas centered fic with a modified ending - If the couple had survived the events of the movie, how would they live afterward?
1. Pre

The Fear.

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Summary: Last of the Mohicans fanfic, that I wrote ages ago and recently rediscovered on my computer, where I edited the ending… kind of like everybody else. Alice/Uncas centered, beginning at the scene in the waterfall that was in the script, but not in the movie for some reason. The main premise of this fic is not so much how the two would survive the events of the film, but how they would live after.

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(I.)

Alice knew she was going to die then.

"You mustn't tell her. Say nothing to Alice." Cora had whispered into Nathaniel Poe's shirt, as he held her close to him.

She didn't need to be told what had happened... from a distance. Her hand drifted to her chest on it's own, and felt her heartbeat there. Such a fluttering, fragile thing, so fragile that anything, a knife, a bit of metal, something that glinted like the stars that shone outside, could cut through and silence it forever. It could cut, and gnarled, hungry fingers could pull it out and the teeth could devour it as if it were nothing.

It was too simple, too easy to wipe all traces of a heartbeat away forever. In an instance, a flash of a knife, the man, her father, was lost to her forever. If Uncas had not come for her, come for her and her sister, she too would have been lost under some ball of metal, some humming blade.

Alice stared at the stars, visible behind a veil of water, and the small world that surrounded her thought she had lost her mind.

Uncas watched her when no one else did, and saw how she had grown so silent. She no longer belonged to the world that the others were so preoccupied with, she was somewhere else, lost in the stars, the moon.

Alice knew she was going to die, but want for life was nothing to her then. This world with all of its blood, all of its knives, was for nothing. It was the stars, that endless tranquil sprawl- that was her solace. If only she could have left then, they weren't so very far, just beyond the falls...

She had no way of knowing how much time had passed, her sister, Nathaniel, they had all vanished somewhere in the dark recesses of the cave. The wolves were howling, and that meant something, but what she did not know. Alice wandered, looking for the sky until she had found it, resting somewhere between a break in the wall, a fissure. It looked so close to the earth then, something she could step into - just a little farther.

A dark hand grabbed her and pulled her back, away from that silly dream she had.  
Alice didn't have to open her eyes to know it was Uncas that held her, his smell of leather, earth and gunpowder, someone from the world, not the celestial bodies above them.

His dark eyes met hers, and he held a finger to his lips, asking only for silence. With Uncas' arms around her, she suddenly began to feel fatigue and weariness taking its toll on her. It didn't matter, because she was safe then, with him. She lie against the rocks, and he sank to the ground with her, trying to somehow make her stand again.

Alice could hear his heart, beneath his chest, strong and steady unlike her own frightened, rapid beat. But then... just as easily as all the others, it could be silenced.

What if she were to lose him, like her father? Like all of the others she had seen die? Fear gripped her, and she clung to him, tighter than before.

"Uncas..." She whispered, her voice frightened and soft, somehow hoping that he would understand.

He wanted to calm her, but Alice would not be calmed, faced with the thought of losing him- someone who made her feel safe. Without him, the world would be cold, hard, and filled with death.

A kiss, something simple, but he pulled away, his expression dismal and confused.

"Uncas," Alice pleaded. She needed him. She needed him to hold her and kiss her and love her, just as he needed something to protect.

He loved her then, moving against her in the dim light, carefully, gently.

But Alice knew, somewhere in the back of her mind that she couldn't hold him here forever, that time was something neither of them had. His fingers entangled in her hair, Uncas leaned forward to kiss her lips, and a sob escaped from them.

Pain. Pain from having him inside of her and brought her mind away from stars and the moon and intangible things like love. He had stopped now, and then the tears came. Uncas held her then, in an attempt to console her.

She wondered what she was doing, and marveled at her selfishness, her fear. Alice pulled away from him in shame, her body shaking with sobs.

Uncas reached for her again, finding her pale form in the dark, and held her to him tightly, with the same force of desperation that had caused her to cling to him. In that silence, Alice wrapped her arms around him, realizing that he did not want to lose her, either, that he had felt the same fear she had.

Eventually, she fell asleep, safe in that embrace, while Uncas waited, wide-awake, listening for the wolves.

(II.)

Alice suddenly stood dangerously close to the edge, and everyone was watching her, whether by will or some act of compulsion, some desperate attempt to save Uncas, she did not know. Cora would have done something different, something wild, but that was not Alice. Her strength was in silence.

She did not know how she had come to be here. Everything since the night before passed in a blur of confused images and surreal events. They had been captured, and Cora had been saved – not her – but Uncas had come for her anyway, and now he was doomed.

Magua's blade was stilled, the air humming with the movement that would have ended the life of the man she loved. She took another step back, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy. Magua signaled to his men before lowering his blade, and no one dared approach.

Uncas looked at her with wild, dark eyes, and she knew that he would allow himself to die before they took her away from him forever. If only she could have made him understand how she didn't want to live in a world in which he did not exist.

Magua stepped towards her, holding out his hand, reddened with blood. Alice only moved farther away. She could feel the wind rising up from the ravine, knowing that it wouldn't stop her from falling farther, falling faster.

Magua turned to Uncas, realizing that Munroe's daughter already belonged to him. His chief had ordered that Munroe's seed must not die, so too, the seed of the Mohican tribe he would let live.

"We go." Magua said simply, and they left, stepping over the men Uncas had slain, saying nothing.

Uncas kept his eyes on Alice as Magua and his men left them. There was blood at his side, but the wound was not deep.

Alice did not leave the safety of the ledge until they had gone, her sister, Cora, Nathaniel and Chingachgook emerged from the rocks, watching them leave in awe.

Uncas approached her slowly, carefully picking his way across the path, and reached for her. This hand, this familiar, loved, hand, she took, and allowed him to pull her to safety as he had done before.

He held her hands in his, and cut the bindings on her wrists, frowning as he inspected the deep red marks, and he stepped away again.

"Alice!" Cora embraced her sister, tearfully. "Oh, Alice." She moved back, examining her carefully. "I'm sorry."

(III.)

They left the promontory, taking shelter in a cave as the sun waned.

Uncas tended to his wound in silence, as Cora and Nathaniel talked in grave tones while Alice sat beside him, and stared into the fire they had built.

"What will you do?" Cora was asking him.

"Winter with the Delaware- my father's cousins. And in the spring, cross the Ohio and look for land to settle with my father and brother in a new place called Can-tuck-ee." He paused, looking over at his father, quiet with contemplation. "Will you go back to England?" He asked her.

"I have Alice to think of." Cora spoke gently.

After being silent for a very long time, Alice picked up her head. "There is nothing to go back for." She said, her voice soft, but audible.

"What?" Cora asked, as if she had not heard her.

"I want to stay." Alice said. "There is nothing…. Nothing to go back to England for. Everything is gone."

"Then I will stay, too." Cora turned to Nathaniel.

"Then you will stay in America?" He asked. "And you will be my wife?"

"I will." Cora answered after a pause. "Yes, I will."

"The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the red man of the wilderness forests in front of it. Until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us ... The frontier place is for people like my white son and his woman and their children." Chingachgook spoke at last.

Alice leaned her head back, resting against Uncas' knee, flooded with the relief that she hadn't lost him. She felt his gentle, calloused hand on her neck, drifting and resting on her shoulder. Alice closed her eyes.

Cora and Nathaniel did not see them, they were looking deep into each other's eyes, wondering how they had chanced to find each other in the first place.

Chingachgook watched them, carefully. He had seen the depths of his son's devotion for this white woman ever since the first time he had seen Uncas look at her. It was Alice that surprised him most of all, how someone from such a vastly different world could come to understand his quiet son, how they spoke to each other without needing to speak at all.

Night came quickly, and they slept, Uncas keeping watch at the mouth of the cave for all manner of things that might come for them.

There were steps behind him, and he turned quickly, silently.

"I'm sorry." Alice breathed.

His eyes softened and she sat next to him, his arm comfortably around her, and she rested her head against his chest.

"Why did you chose me?" Alice whispered.

"Because our spirit is the same. I knew that when I looked at you." He answered.

Alice smiled, and her eyes turned upwards, towards the stars. "It will be hard, won't it?"

"Yes." He nodded.

"I'll manage." Alice yawned.

Uncas laughed at this, his fingers entangled in her hair, and Alice laughed too. "There's a lot of ground to cover in the morning." He said. It would be a hard life for her, Uncas knew, the youngest daughter of a wealthy man, but somehow she would be all right. Somehow they all would.


	2. Post

The Fear.

Chapter II. Post

AN: I am so surprised that I actually got reviews! Thank you. So, here's the next chapter. Still editing the third but should have it up shortly. Thank you so much.

(I.)

"They're like little houses…" Alice breathed. Uncas steadied her as they stood on a rock outcropping overlooking the Delaware village.

She was amazed by everything she saw, even after seeing so much. It was that wonder in her that held his attention, even now. Uncas laughed at her and held her tighter.

"You're making fun of me again." Alice smiled, but in her smile there was a sadness. She thought of home, of England, the place she couldn't return to. Was it a sin to love this man? She knew that many would say so, that she had been bewitched, deceived in him. She pressed her face against his dark shirt, and lost herself in the smell of gunpowder, leather and earth.

(II.)

The winter had been mild, that year, but it had been difficult for Alice.

The Delaware spoke a language she did not understand, but most of them knew some English. Alice did all she could to pull her weight, but she tired easily, and even her sister did not know why. Sometimes, when she was not so very tired, she would sit with Uncas, and he would show her the stars, and tell her the stories he knew. Sometimes, she told him hers, Greek fictions she had read a very long time ago.

He loved her at night, when they were alone in one of those little houses, but there was no more pain, only familiarity in his touch.

The light had begun to draw across the skies, when Uncas stirred beside her.

"Stay." Alice murmured, her head resting against his neck. "It's too early."

"You always say that it's too early." He chuckled, but held her a moment longer anyway, forcing himself to be still, before he stirred again.

Uncas looked back at her sleeping form, waiting for another protest. When it came, he merely smiled, leaned over and kissed her forehead, before standing to get dressed.

The days wore on, under the heavy clothes she wore in winter she felt her stomach tighten and swell. Alice felt sick more days than not, unable to eat, and sleep constantly eluding her.

Uncas held her at night, unable to do anything else to comfort her.

The child was born before spring came, a boy that Uncas chose to name James.

Alice stared at her son in amazement, marveling at his tiny features, his dark skin, and long grasping fingers.

A sound, a cry, escaped from his mouth, and, unable to help it, tears formed in her eyes with a smile.

Nathaniel clapped his brother on the back, saying something congratulatory, but Alice didn't hear them, she was watching her son's every movement with fascination. Cora was there, too. She wanted to hold the baby, but Alice didn't want to give him up just then.

"You should rest," Uncas insisted later, worry etched in his face as Alice flittered nervously around the small thing that belonged to both of them. But she didn't want to rest, as exhausted as she was.

"I'm alright." She looked up at him.

"You're going to wear yourself out."

When Alice finally did sleep, she curled up and gazed across the room where Uncas held her son, their son, carefully and gently as if he were some great treasure, a smile on his lips, and Alice was happy.

(III.)

The snow had begun to melt, and Chingachgook spoke of leaving for Can-tuck-ee.

Uncas and Nathaniel had gone to gather supplies from one of the neighboring forts for the long journey ahead of them, farther away from England than she had ever been before.

"It's too early." She protested when he got up to leave. Uncas didn't linger, like he usually did, there was far too much to do.

It was that day that the Huron that came, bearing knives and gleaming blades.

The one that stormed in had a painted face, she did not recognize him at first.

Alice ran to her son, not knowing what to do, but knowing she needed to do something. He shoved her aside, as if she were made of nothing heavier than paper.

She threw herself at him, clawing, scratching, kicking, like a wild animal, like all the wild animals, insane with the fear of losing a child.

He turned on her again, driving his knife into her, deliberately missing her heart and instead cutting deep into her shoulder, as to why she could only guess- he meant to take her alive as his captive. Alice recognized him then. Magua. The man that had killed her father, cut his heart from him and ate it.

She grasped at the hilt of the knife as her legs gave out beneath her, and she sunk to the ground, unable to do anything as her child's life was taken away.

He let out a cry, and Alice was overcome by a feeling of helplessness, guilt, anger.

She heard her heart pounding in her ears as red flooded her vision. Alice looked up at the man who had killed her father, her son, only seeing red.

She pulled the knife from where it had been buried in her shoulder, and drove it into his chest with all the force she could muster.

She drew it back, and stabbed him again, and again, her hands red with blood, most of it his, some hers, and some belonged to what had once been her child.

Magua fell to the ground, gasping as his life was leaving him, but Alice could not feel pity now.

Shaking with a curious rage she cut him open, exposing his heart, and sliced it away.

Only then the red began to fade, and she dropped the knife, the unloving heart, now marveling at what she had done, at the son that was taken away.

When Uncas returned, he ran to find her, as Nathaniel searched for his own woman in desperation, among all the others in search of what was left of their families.

Alice sat as far away from the man she had killed as possible, hugging her knees to her chest, covered in blood, unable to cry but instead staring out into nothing, her eyes and face blank.

"He's gone." She murmured, when he crouched down next to her. "James is gone."

"They took him?" Uncas gritted his teeth.

"No, he killed James." She couldn't look at Uncas, not yet. "Then I killed him."

And then he understood, looking away, his eyes became glazed and distant. He drew Alice close to him, but she pushed away. Uncas reached for her again, and she did not protest, gathering her in his arms, a hand beneath her knees another at her back, carrying her away from the blood, the death, but it would not leave her hands, her mind.

"I am sorry." Cora tried to sound comforting as she stitched closed the wound at Alice's shoulder. "There will be other children." She did not become angry, but instead said nothing. Cora wouldn't have understood – she had never been a mother, for all her wisdom and guidance, she could not help her now.

Alice slept, with her sister watching over her, awakening once the sun had gone and the air was cold and dark and silent.

She rose from the bed Cora had made for her and found Uncas, lying awake, unable to rest. She lie down next to him and cried, softly, quietly, until there were no more tears.

When the snow had gone, they left for Can-tuck-ee, and Alice was glad to leave the place that had taken so much away from her.

(IV.)

When they reached the new frontier, the air was hot and warm.

They built their houses close together, sturdy things made out of thick wood planks and paper covering the windows.

They traded as trappers, hunters, even exchanged horses with other settlers, sometimes for money, sometimes cloth and other things.

Alice was no good at cooking, they laughingly discovered, though she later did learn, but she mended and crafted clothing with perfect, even, careful stitches.

There were thunderstorms, that summer, and even though she was afraid she couldn't help but watch the light streak across the dark skies while Uncas slept.

Cora had a daughter in the autumn.

"What are you going to call her?" Alice smiled at her sister's child, sleeping in her arms, while images of her own lost child stirred in her mind.

"Ada." Cora gave a tired smile, the men's voices could be heard from just beyond the door.

"She's beautiful." Alice said, sounding a little sad.

"Oh, don't cry, don't cry." Cora leaned over, smoothing the hair on her sister's forehead and kissing it.

"I'm fine." She placed the infant back in her mother's arms.

It made her wonder, become lost in thought again. Children, surely there would be more children, but the memory of the one she had seen die lingered, and she knew it would never go away.


	3. Fever

Fear.

Chapter III. Fever

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(A/N: Thanks to everyone that read. Almost done with final chapter, hopefully will have it up soon.)

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(I.)

Alice spoke to the horses they kept in the sprawling fields near the houses they had built, about everything and nothing, and they came to be more at ease with her than with anyone else.

A finicky brown mare that Nathaniel had found badly injured and wandering came to her, pressing her face against her careful hands, but shied away from everyone else.

"You're back," Alice said.

"I can't sneak up on you anymore." Uncas smiled.

"No," She spoke softly, as the mare stepped away from this new stranger.

"It's going to rain," He nodded at the direction of the gathering clouds in the west. Impulsively, she placed a hand on his arm, twisting around it until her hand came to rest over his.

"It is." She agreed.

Alice had grown to love the days when it rained, when the air cooled and the morning started late.

Outside, the wind howled violently, but here was calm and warm.

Uncas still slept, she sat up and curled her knees to her chest, watching as the rain fell and crystallized against the glass. Glass. It had been such a luxury, but somehow they had bought it.

Trying her best to be silent, Alice awkwardly climbed over her lover, shivering when her feet touched the cool wood floor.

Uncas reached for her, wrapping her arms around her, and pulled Alice back to him.

"It's too early." He murmured.

(V.)

Cora found herself taking care of her sister less and less, some days just talking about places, far away places they had been once, people they had known once.

Alice adored her niece Ada, but as Cora watched them she couldn't help but notice how her eyes grew glazed and sorrowful. As Ada learned to form words she began to shriek 'Ah!' excitedly whenever Alice entered the room.

"Yes, Ah is here." Cora said, already expecting to have another child, tired-eyed but content all the same.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh I suppose I look quite done for." Cora laughed.

"No," Alice insisted. "Never."

Suddenly, Nathaniel burst in the door. "Cora!" he said, breathless. "There's been an accident, Uncas-" He suddenly noticed Alice there, holding his daughter, and was unable to speak once he met her eyes.

"What's happened?" She had almost been afraid to ask.

"He fell, cut his leg pretty badly."

Cora was already untying her apron. "I'll leave immediately."

"Let me go." Alice insisted.

"You've never had to stitch a wound closed, it's best if I go. Stay here with Ada." Cora said, then gently "Please."

Alice watched them leave, standing in the door. She thought of Uncas, his body broken and shuddered.

"Ah!" Ada called out.

Wiping at her face, she forced a smile.

They came later, Chingatchook and Nathaniel, half carrying them to the house her sister lived in.

Chingatchook set his son down on a cot Cora had set in some far off corner of the house, Alice sat motionless, watching the scene unfold before her as if it were taking place somewhere she wasn't.

When Cora had cleaned the wound, stitched and bandaged it to her satisfaction, she left him to sleep.

Alice quietly made her way to Uncas, his face a little paler than usual, and sat beside him, laying her hand ever so gently on his. But he did not wake.

Somewhere in those hours she stayed with him, she fell asleep, and woke to Cora placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Go home, get some rest."

Alice shook her head, turning back to him. She found herself wondering what might happen if he didn't wake and shuddered.

She reached for his hand, hot with fever, and held it against her cheek.

Composing herself a little, she reached for the bowl of water beside him and began mopping his forehead with a damp cloth.

By the morning the fever had gone and his breath was steady.

Relieved, Alice was able to leave his side, boil coffee, feed the horses.

She washed their clothes and bed linens in a wooden tub outside and carefully pinned them up to dry. Ordinary things.

Her books of poetry and tales of wild adventures were lost to her, far away in London, although she had kept a copy of the Holy Bible her father once owned, though she didn't remember why.

When there was nothing left to keep her hands busy, Alice went back to her sister's house.

"You worry for him too much." Chingatchook smiled down at her, secretly admiring her devotion. "My son is strong."

She had not known the fierce Uncas that slew and scalped his enemies, she had only seen him from a distance.

"I know." Alice breathed. He had been so much stronger than her. "I can't help but worry."

"That is good." Chingatchook said, for to express concern was a way of expressing affection. "My son is lucky, then."

The next day he awoke, but Alice wasn't there. Nathaniel came to get her, outside carefully folding cloth.

"He's asking for you." He had a half smile on his face. "You didn't need to worry so much."

Alice left the white sheets flittering in the wind and ran to her sister's house.

"Your woman's done nothing but fuss over you." Nathaniel teased him as Alice pushed past them, embracing him so forcefully in one of her rare public displays of affection, that he let out a gasp of pain.

"It's all right. I'm all right." He assured her.

"I'm sorry," Alice sat beside him. Somehow the others had all left, leaving them alone. His eyes were laughing at her, kindly teasing her for all her care.

It made Alice smile too, gently pushing against his shoulder chidingly. "Don't make fun of me."

"Ah!" Ada was yelling. "Ah!" She pointed wildly, clinging to Cora's skirt, then releasing it to crawly awkwardly to Alice.

She swooped her up instantly, brushing off the small, neat dress she wore.

Holding her niece, Alice caught Uncas sighing and smiled a half-smile, then wondered if anyone knew what she meant.

(VI.)

"A little girl," Alice wondered out loud. "Or maybe…" She paused, bending over to collect the linens she had folded before going back into the house where it was cool, dark and quiet. Outside with the sun beating down on her caused her head to ache, resulting in one of the many pains she had been afflicted with recently.

Uncas had left for the day, his leg now healed with the passing of time.

Suddenly very tired she brought a hand to her forehead.

Once she had returned the clean things to their proper place Alice wandered into the kitchen, but the house was spinning around her and her fatigue was overwhelming. She went upstairs to lie down, everything else could wait.

Uncas returned home, sensing something was amiss – and Alice was not there to greet him.

He found her, hot and feverish but shivering, and went to get her sister, who sent for a doctor.

The doctor came down the stairs, sighing, his black bag in hand. "The fever has a putrid tendency," He informed them, adjusting his glasses. "I've done all I can."

"Will she be all right?" Cora asked.

Uncas stood stone faced under the doctor's critical gaze.

"Time will tell." He collected his hat. "Time will tell." Then a pause. "You didn't tell me she was with child."

"She is?" Cora sounded surprised.

"Well, not anymore." He frowned at Uncas, then was gone.

Cora stayed with her through the night. In her feverish delusion, she called for her mother, their father, her son.

"Where is James? He's not here…"

Cora said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

"She's out of danger." Cora informed Uncas once the fever had passed.

Alice looked so fragile – pale and thin lying in their bed forlornly gazing out the window as it rained. Weakened from her illness it was the unborn child, now lost, that weighed on her mind. She didn't seem to notice Uncas standing there, lost in the infinite pools of water against the glass.

He reached for her hand, cool, white and small against his own.

Alice lie awake that night against his chest, listening to the slow, steady beating of his heart, constant and unchanging. Without that immutable sound, if she ever lost it, lost him, she wondered if the world with all its caprice and inconstance would swallow her whole.

When she did sleep, images came to her, visions of her son, the tiny delicate features she loved, and she held him close to her, until Magua came with his painted face and blood red hands and she woke screaming.

"What's happened?" Uncas awoke instantly, but Alice didn't hear him, lost already to the sobs that shook her.

(VII.)

The next morning the sky was clear and blue. There were windmills in the distance, across an endless viridian sprawl. Her head still ached a little, but otherwise Alice felt all right, sitting on the porch steps outside her neat, clean and quiet house.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned her head. "Uncas," her mouth twisted into a smile on its own, and he sat beside her. Together, they watched the world stand still.


	4. Shaking Paper

The Fear.

Chapter IV. Shaking Paper

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Author's Note: Thanks so much to everyone who read, I was kind of surprised given the date of LOTM's release that this fic generated as much response as it did. This is the final chapter, comments are always appreciated!

* * *

(1.)

Winter came late, the summer lingered and lasted, the months stretching out into an eternity.

Alice remembered when there was no time, no time for either of them, when she was so certain that they were doomed, and now she had all the time she could have ever wanted.

She would sit and patterns, flowers would spring from the cloth beneath her fingertips, in the days that slowly became nights.

She found herself thinking of London less and less, as she and Cora seldom spoke of it. She thought of how women often had to leave places like that behind, familiar places, to cross oceans, continents, with husbands and lovers.

It might enter her mind from time to time, like a sigh, before it turned to something else, something tangible that could be touched and held.

When summer came again, Alice sadly smiled at her sister, always tired but always happy, a new mewling infant always in her arms while Ada ran wild and laughing.

Cora's house was loud and full of noises, cries, laughter. Alice lived in her tailored world with Uncas, and it was a quiet kind of happiness. She saw his eyes, whenever he took his brother's children on his lap, whenever he saw his father telling them stories, something longing, something wistful. Like her, he remembered the child they once held, something too fragile and delicate to last.

(2.)

The finicky mare in the stables grew round and heavy, and spent most of the day lying in the hay.

Alice did not know what to do the night the colt was born, she held the mare's muzzle in her hands, a lamp beside her, the only way the creature could be comforted, while Uncas did mostly everything else.

The colt was black as night and stood shakily on spindly legs, hobbling towards it's mother. Alice found herself becoming misty-eyed, without completely being able to understand why.

Uncas offered her his arm to stand, as he always did, and Alice took it, grasping the lamp.

They went back to the house in the dark, and Uncas released himself from her, and closed the door behind them. She placed the lamp on that heavy table, and stared at that flickering flame.

Uncas' footsteps fell behind her, then stopped, waiting, waiting for her to put out the light, waiting for her to follow him.

Alice turned to him, abandoning the lamp, kissing his neck, his face, until finally her lips found his, and he responded to her then, pressing his hands against her shoulder blades, then slowly traveled down her back.

Suddenly, she broke the kiss, hiding her face against his shirt.

"There will be time," He whispered to her. "There will be time."

A cry escaped from her, and Uncas held her tighter.

And so, time passed that way, in a myriad of mornings and days and nights.

(3.)

"It's too early." Alice protested as Uncas untangled himself from their embrace.

"You always say it's too early." He smiled, lying back anyway. Outside it rained, and Alice drew closer to him, eyes shut and draped a thin, pale arm across his chest, as if that alone could keep him there - at least for a few moments longer, until he rose and went downstairs.

"Is momma coming?" The little girl, 5 years old, they had named Esther murmured with a yawn, sitting at the heavy wooden table. "I'm hungry."

"She says it's too early." Uncas lifted her up, effortlessly. "Your brother still asleep?"  
Twins. Alice had named him Edmund, after her father.

"But she always says it's too early." Esther protested.

"You'd better go tell her." Uncas suggested.

"All right." He put her down and she ran up the rough hewn steps.

Esther had to climb still, to reach her mother's bed.

"Momma." She whispered, her small fingers brushing against Alice's face.

"Good morning sweet." She spoke slowly, brushing her daughters dark hair behind her ear. Esther had a surprisingly pale complexion, and her mother's features, but her father's dark eyes.

"Wake up momma." She insisted.

"It's too early." Alice reached out, taking the child in her arms so that she had to lie down.

"No, no." Esther protested. "You have to wake up."

Alice laughed at her - stern little girl making demands in her firm American accent.

Esther ran to the stairs and called down. "She won't wake up."

"She won't?" Uncas called back, standing on the staircase. "I think I have to do something." He said, his footsteps on the stair.

"No," Alice protested, covering her face with a pillow as if to hide. But he picked her up anyway, and spun her around as if she weighed no more than one of their children, Esther's laughter rang in her ears.

When he finally returned her to her feet, Alice clung to him, dizzy and laughing.

Edmund had run up the stairs, wondering at the noise. "What's going on?" He rubbed at his eyes, then a complaint at this familiar game: "You woke me up."

"Oh, my little old man." Alice smiled, bending over to kiss his forehead and ruffle his dark hair.

Cora and Nathaniel had four children, the eldest three were girls and the youngest was a boy named for his father, who felt slightly out of place no matter what he did.

Chingatchook loved all of his grandchildren, and he told them all the same stories, but their favorite was one of his own devising about a pale-faced stranger in a strange land and the man who fell in love with her.

Esther and Edmund did not know the exact moment they realized that their family was different from all the others that had come here, wandering from other places nearer and farther.

They were sent to school at a nearby church when they were old enough, some of the other children had parents that were pale, some red, and some both. It was not that that set Alice and Uncas apart.

It was clear that their father adored their mother, something in how he bent his head to hear every soft-spoken word she uttered, and the other times when they didn't need to speak at all.  
In the summer, when the nights were warm, they would lie in the grass and look up at the sky, as if they had all the time in the world.


End file.
